If a Spiritual Teacher does not cherish and have a good relationship with his or her students, then the Teacher cannot help the students and the students will not gain any realizations.
In Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, the Buddhist Master Shantideva makes the point that if an employer is concerned only with his own interests and does not look after the welfare of his employees, the employees will be unhappy. They will probably work inefficiently, and will certainly not be enthusiastic about fulfilling their employer’s wishes. Thus the employer will suffer from his own lack of consideration toward his employees. Similarly, if the employees are concerned only with what they can get out of the company, this will anger their employer, who may reduce their wages or ask them to leave. The company may even go bankrupt, causing them all to lose their jobs. In this way the employees will suffer from their lack of consideration toward their employer. In every field of activity the best way to ensure success is for the people involved to reduce their self-cherishing and to have a greater sense of consideration for others. There may sometimes appear to be short-term advantages to self-cherishing, but in the long term there are always only problems. The solution to all the problems of daily life is to cherish others.
All the suffering we experience is the result of negative karma, and the source of all negative karma is self-cherishing. It is because we have such an exaggerated sense of our own importance that we frustrate other people’s wishes in order to fulfill our own. Driven by our selfish wishes we think nothing of destroying others’ peace of mind and causing them distress. Such actions only sow the seeds for future suffering. If we sincerely cherish others we will have no wish to hurt them and will stop engaging in destructive and harmful actions. We will naturally observe pure moral discipline and refrain from killing or being cruel to other living beings, stealing from them or interfering with their relationships. As a result we will not have to experience the unpleasant effects of these negative actions in the future. In this way cherishing others protects us from all future problems caused by negative karma.
By cherishing others we continuously accumulate merit, and merit is the main cause of success in all our activities. If we cherish all living beings we will naturally perform many virtuous and helpful actions. Gradually all our actions of body, speech and mind will become pure and beneficial, and we will become a source of happiness and inspiration for everyone we meet. We will discover through our own experience that this precious mind of love is the real wish-granting jewel, because it fulfills the pure wishes of both ourself and all living beings.
The mind that cherishes others is the supreme good heart. Keeping such a good heart will result only in happiness for ourself and all those around us. This good heart is the very essence of the Mahayana path and the main cause of great compassion, the wish to protect all living beings from fear and suffering. Through improving our great compassion we will eventually achieve the universal compassion of a Buddha, which actually has the power to protect all living beings from suffering. In this way cherishing others leads us to Buddhahood. It is for this reason that Langri Tangpa begins Eight Verses with the prayer to cherish all living beings in order to attain the ultimate, supreme goal of full enlightenment.
Through contemplating all these advantages of cherishing others we arrive at the following determination:
I will cherish all living beings without exception because this precious mind of love is the supreme method for solving all problems and fulfilling all wishes. Eventually it will give me the supreme happiness of enlightenment.
We meditate on this determination single-pointedly for as long as possible and develop a strong feeling of cherishing each and every living being. When we arise from meditation we try to maintain this feeling and put our resolution into practice. Whenever we are with other people we should be continuously mindful that their happiness and wishes are at least as important as our own. Of course we cannot cherish all living beings right away, but by training our mind in this attitude, beginning with our family and friends, we can gradually extend the scope of our love until it embraces all living beings. When in this way we sincerely cherish all living beings we are no longer an ordinary person but have become a great being, like a Bodhisattva.
Nagarjuna
Enhancing Cherishing Love
Whenever I associate with others,
May I view myself as the lowest of all;
And with a pure intention,
May I cherish others as supreme.
In the first verse Bodhisattva Langri Tangpa explains how to cherish all living beings, and in this verse he now shows us how to enhance this mind of love. The best way to do this is to familiarize ourself with cherishing all living beings by putting our determination to cherish them into practice day and night. To help strengthen this determination Langri Tangpa gives us further instructions on enhancing cherishing love.
We all have someone whom we regard as especially precious, such as our child, our partner or our mother. This person seems to be imbued with unique qualities that make him or her stand out from others. We treasure and want to take special care of this person. We need to learn to regard all living beings in a similar way, recognizing each and every one as special and uniquely valuable. Although we already cherish our family and close friends, we do not love strangers, and we certainly do not love our enemies. For us the vast majority of living beings are of no particular significance. By practicing Langri Tangpa’s instructions we can remove this bias and come to treasure each and every living being, just as a mother regards her dearest child. The more we can deepen and enhance our love in this way, the stronger our compassion and bodhichitta will become, and the quicker we will attain enlightenment.
RECOGNIZING OUR FAULTS IN THE MIRROR OF DHARMA
The main reason why we do not cherish all living beings is that we are so preoccupied with ourself, and this leaves very little room in our mind to appreciate others. If we wish to cherish others sincerely we have to reduce our obsessive self-concern. Why is it that we regard ourself as so precious, but not others? It is because we are so familiar with self-cherishing. Since beginningless time we have grasped at a truly existent I. This grasping at I automatically gives rise to self-cherishing, which instinctively feels, “I am more important than others.” For ordinary beings, grasping at one’s own I and self-cherishing are like two sides of the same coin: I-grasping grasps at a truly existent I, whereas self-cherishing feels this I to be precious and cherishes it. The fundamental reason for this is our constant familiarity with our self-cherishing, day and night, even during our sleep.
Since we regard our self or I as so very precious and important, we exaggerate our own good qualities and develop an inflated view of ourself. Almost anything can serve as a basis for this arrogant mind, such as our appearance, possessions, knowledge, experiences or status. If we make a witty remark we think, “I’m so clever!”, or if we have traveled around the world we feel that this automatically makes us a fascinating person. We can even develop pride on the basis of things we should be ashamed of, such as our ability to deceive others, or on qualities that we merely imagine we possess. On the other hand we find it very hard to accept our mistakes and shortcomings. We spend so much time contemplating our real or imagined good qualities that we become oblivious to our faults. In reality our mind is full of gross delusions but we ignore them and may even fool ourself into thinking that we do not have such repulsive minds. This is like pretending that there is no dirt in our house after sweeping it under the rug.
It is often so painful to admit that we have faults that we make all manner of excuses rather than alter our exalted view of ourself. One of the most common ways of not facing up to our faults is to blame others. For instance, if we have a difficult relationship with someone we naturally conclude that it is entirely his
